Ringo Who?

I think one of the most fun experiences I ever had with a group of 7th graders started with a chance remark I made during rehearsal. Contest was over and we were working on some lighter music for the spring concert. I had come across a nice little band arrangement of “Hey Jude” which I had wanted to do for several years. The only trouble was every time I started to pull the piece out to play I got a little nervous…let me explain why.

Band directors have this morbid fear of rehearsing band arrangements of our favorite music because we tend to hear it all the time in our heads…wrong notes and all…for years and years…

Being a huge lover of Beatles music, I was very apprehensive about having one of the greatest rock ballads of all time be forever replaced in my head by a middle school band version that makes me cringe because the trombone section couldn’t remember to play A-flat.

On the other hand, it’s very hard to convince your principal to budget you money for new music when you haven’t played everything in your library yet. So, with a little reluctance, I decided to dust off the arrangement and allow fate to take its course (I guess I should point out that I also passed out two other pieces on the same day so if things got ugly I could quickly abandon ship).

We had been rehearsing (I use the term loosely) the number for about ten minutes. The kids were trying their best. I was wincing in pain at all the wrong notes and bad attacks and just hoping that Paul McCartney wouldn’t sue. Finally, I stopped everyone and decided to regroup (somehow the trumpets were eight measures off). Raising my baton to try again I said to everyone “just play it how you’ve heard it”. I aged about thirty years standing there on the podium as I heard the entire band collectively reply, “we’ve never heard it before.”

The assault on music education continued when one of my flute players perked up and asked, “didn’t the Monkees write that?”

I almost fell off the podium.

Later that evening after a good dinner, a few aspirin, and a talk with my wife, I decided I needed to change my approach. Any music education on the history of popular music and the Beatles’ contribution to it was going to have to come from me if I was going to be able to liberate them from their contemporary auto-tuned manufactured pop limbo.

So, the next day I walked in armed with a few Beatles pictures and a CD of “Hey Jude”. We listened to the music, talked about the lyrics, and learned why the song was so important. We even sang along on the “Na Na” chorus at the end. The piece came together over the next week, and it was the parent favorite on the Spring Concert.

But it didn’t stop there.

After the Spring Concert was over, the kids wanted to know more about early pop music and the Beatles in general. So, I pulled out band arrangements of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “Yesterday”, and “Twist and Shout”. We learned about the origins of Rock and Roll Music and listened to numerous examples of records from the era. The different sounds on “Sergeant Pepper” really took everyone by surprise, and I even caught one of my clarinet players singing along to “Nowhere Man”.

The funniest moment however came from Laura, one of my percussionists, who had heard the high pitched “whoooo” while listening to “Twist and Shout”:

“Why are they yelling like that?” she asked.

“All the Beatles had long, mop-like haircuts which was very wild for the time,” I answered, “girls would scream and faint whenever the Beatles shook their hair around and yelled ‘whoooo’.”

The next day while rehearsing “Twist and Shout” I happened to glance up at Laura (who was playing the drum set part). She had her hair tied up in a long, wild, frizzy, pony tail, and was thrashing her head from side to side as she banged away on the ride cymbal. I actually laughed out loud (this doesn’t happen very often). The rest of the band eventually figured out what was going on and turned around to see. After several minutes of giggling throughout the room, I attempted to salvage the rest of the rehearsal.